I cover real estate, writing about everything from trends in the housing market to ultra high-end luxury listings to data-based cities lists. Real estate is in my blood thanks to a realtor for a mom and a property developer/landlord for a dad. I have had a front row seat for the real estate market's inflation and subsequent crash over the past decade, watching my dad carry on with underwater mortgages and my mom struggle to put home sales together. I have been both a homeowner and a renter in the New York area and can't decide which I prefer.
I am also a regular guest on the 'Forbes on Fox' show on Fox News every Saturday morning and can sometimes be found discussing the major business headlines of the week on MSNBC's 'Weekends with Alex Witt.'
Before taking on the real estate beat, I worked as an Anchor/Reporter in Forbes Video. These days I shoot videos of crazy homes.
I graduated from New York University in 2009 with a BA in Anthropology and prior to that I worked in the other end of media as a recording artist with Sony.
If you have tips, story ideas or listings to submit for consideration, email me at mbrennan@forbes.com.

$100 Million Homes: In The Stratosphere Of Real Estate, Logic Breaks Down

When it comes to selling real estate, price is everything. Whether a $5 million mansion or a $100,000 fixer-upper, asking prices are usually based on a mix of comparable property listings and sales, house and land size and the property’s condition.

But logic often breaks down with the highest-end trophy homes. By definition they are unique, sometimes one-of-a-kind places for which few (or sometimes no) comparables exist. Value becomes highly subjective.

“I call it pricing using the ‘P.F.A.’ or pull from air,” says Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Miller Samuel, a New York-based appraisal firm. Miller values homes, including trophy properties, and tracks sales data in major markets along the East Coast. “It becomes, ‘find the highest sale you can and come up with any kind of logic to talk yourself into a number that’s 10% to 20% higher.’”

Some luxury realtors agree, though they tend to phrase it differently: find the price it would take for a moneyed buyer to sell.

Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in New YorkCity. The recent spate of big-ticket sales has led to the listing of three homes sporting staggering price tags that are only tenuously linked to market comparables. (Miller actually created a fantastic chart of NYC sales prices that can be found here.)

The CitySpire penthouse was listed in July for $100 million, making it America’s most expensive apartment on the market. The octagonal Midtown Manhattan condo is 8,000 square feet stretched across three floors, with a private elevator and 360-degree wraparound terraces 73 floors up overlooking Central Park that are supposedly the highest in the city. The asking price breaks down to roughly $12,500 per square foot, dizzyingly high outdoor space excluded.

Only one property in the history of Manhattan housing has ever fetched a comparable sum: a penthouse in billionaire-centric 15 Central Park West, which went in March for $88 million, or a record-breaking $13,000 per square foot, to a trust held by the daughter of Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. That sale has raised eyebrows as an alleged ploy to hide assets in a messy divorce.

“The $88 million sale is an outlier in all the sales activity so it’s somewhat notable that the extended trophy market boom we are now seeing off of it may not be basis for the market,” explains Miller.In other words, pricing a penthouse off of one sale may be overly ambitious. Particularly when that new $100 million listing sits atop an older building from the 1980s, has low ceilings and is in danger of having some of its prized views obstructed by the super luxury high rise One57, which is under construction a few blocks away. One has to wonder how much of a role marketing played in arriving at the price – $100 million gains a lot of attention.

The same might be said of a penthouse listed for $95 million at the Ritz-Carlton at 50 Central Park South. The price is $25 million more than casino billionaire Steve Wynn recently paid for another penthouse in the hotel-condo building that’s double the size. The new listing, which boasts a glass-roofed solarium facing Central Park and a 42 foot-long ballroom, breaks down to roughly $18,000 per square foot, excluding outdoor space. By comparison, Wynn paid about $6,400 per square foot for his new trophy pad.

A few floors below the Rybolovlev penthouse at 15 Central Park West, two side-by-side condos recently were listed together for $95 million. The owner, steel magnate Leroy Schecter, is combining the units into one large apartment that will have five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a library, a gallery area and access to some of the best building amenities in the city (15 CPW is famous for them). The price per square foot: roughly $18,200. They aren’t even penthouses.

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Interesting piece which rightly uses the word “stratosphere”. This high end market has become completely detached from the general economy. Also US real estate it would seem is just one of the appreciating asset classes some of these super rich foreigners are investing in. Guys like Sheik Hamad and Rybolovlev also seem to be doing pretty well putting their money into fine art and prestiguous soccer teams!!

Hi David, thanks for the comment. the world’s richest have been very bullish on hard assets lately, from real estate to art to cars. I think that’s a big reason the high-end has become detached. There is a belief that the true trophies are a limited number and therefore lack of inventory can justify an outrageous price.

Very interesting to see the $/sq.ft calculations to highlight the “premium” these places are trying to achieve. Smacks of opportunism on the part of the sellers if you ask me. Why not, I guess, maybe someone will bite.

London and New York are unique in their appeal to global ultra-high net worth people, and I think will continue to attract people looking for both real estate and trophy homes, i.e. prices will continue to rise, but clearly the premium some of the properties you list are excessive.

I suspect, despite their wealth, even oligarchs and sheikhs will do the simple $/sq.ft sums too! (or at least one of their advisors will)

Hi Matt, thanks for the comment. They definitely do! There are exceptions, but even billionaires have been trolling for high-end bargains. Alex Rovt bought the Sloane Mansion out of foreclosure last yr, Ron Burkle picked up the Ennis House for 70% off the initial list price, John Paulson got a 60%+ discount on Hala Ranch — even Ecclestone’s over-the-top $85m purchase of the Manor in LA came at a 43% discount (plus she paid in pounds versus 2011′s weak dollar). Looks like Wynn did really well when he bought in the Ritz earlier this year. And buildings like 15 CPW have been great investments appreciating as much as 50% since the rest of the market’s housing peak.

I am from the UK but have been involved in property most of my working life, both here, in Europe and the West Indies so I read this article with interest. The same applies the world over – that old saying ‘ location, location location ‘ . A run down apartment in the right area can fetch the same price as a flashy place in the wrong area. The key to making money is to spot in advance where the right areas are going to be. Property developers have had a field day over recent years in London, buying up almost derelict warehouses along the river front and converting to luxury apartments, some valued at millions.

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